Judith Shahn was born in Paris to the artist Ben Shahn and his wife, Tillie Goldstein, a suffragette. She grew up in New York City and spent summers in Truro, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in the house purchased by her mother in 1924.

       As a small child Shahn painted alongside her father and as a young artist she took life classes with the painter Moses Soyer. She attended Olivet College, Michigan, and graduated from Mexico City College in 1949. After her return to New York Shahn studied art history at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. She was married to the Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Alan Dugan (1923-2003); they lived in New York and Truro. Their gradual transition to Cape Cod was completed in 1989 and they were active members of the artists’ community. Dugan was a founder of the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, and Shahn was a long-time member of the Board of Trustees.

       Shahn was a painter, draughtsman, printmaker, and graphic artist. Her drawings appeared in The New Yorker magazine from 1958 to1992, as well as in Harpers, The Nation, Gourmet, and others. She also made numerous book covers and posters.

       Starting with a show at the Gallerie Beatrice Viggiani, Rome, Italy, in 1964, there have been more than seventy one-woman shows of work by Shahn. The Provincetown Art Association and Museum held an extensive retrospective in 1996; their catalogue remains a significant monograph on the artist. Further, in recognition of the artist’s donation of a complete archive of her serigraphs, The PAAM showed Judith Shahn, Recent Gifts to the PAAM, spring, 2011.

       This current exhibition of paintings and drawings, Judith Shahn, Early Work: New York, Cape Cod, Mexico, is on view at the Susan Teller Gallery, September 15 through October 8, 2011.

       In addition to the Provincetown Art Association and Museum and the Cape Cod Museum of Art, Dennis (which also houses an archive of the serigraphs as well as related drawings), work by Judith Shahn is in numerous permanent collections including The Newark Museum, New Jersey, Carnegie-Mellow University, Pittsburgh, and the Griffiths Art Center, St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY.